Intuition and the Creation of a Better World

Robinson, Edward

It is the good fortune of our species, to put it no higher, to be equipped with a faculty that can outflank the apparently un-avoidable conclusions with which the calculations of reason confront us. There is a parallel here in the structure of the human eye. The lateral cells of the retina are more sensitive to movement than those in the centre. (Test this by watching a television screen out of the corner of your eye.) This feature has survival value for us. The hunter needs to be specially alert to what is happening on the fringes of his vision. So with the human mind. The area of our conscious awareness as it moves like a spotlight over the landscape is at any one time limited; but at its fringes and beyond there are infinite possibilities of vision, possibilities which would be quite cripplingly distracting if they all crowded in on us at once. Yet to have no access to them would be no less inhibiting. What is going on at the extreme limits of our consciousness may be of vital importance to us if our growth into full humanity is not to be arrested or to remain stunted. What we need, and what we have, is the ability to see more in the present, in any particular present, than meets the eye. What enables us to do this is the faculty of imagination.

Edward Robinson, Icons of the Present: Some Reflections on Art, the Sacred and the Holy, pp. 19-20